Grooveshark, a digital music streaming company, has been sued by EMI Group for not paying its dues in forms of royalties.
Grooveshark had entered into licensing agreement to stream digital music owned by EMI, by paying royalties, which EMI Music Publishing claims have not been remitted.
Companies like Vivendi SA’s UniversalMusic Group, Sony Corp and Warner Music Group had also recently filed a lawsuit against Grooveshark for pirating thousands of songs.
Some estimates put the arrears to $150,000 but EMI says the actual sum is much bigger, stating that Grooveshark had acknowledged the dues in writing, but refused payment or accountability towards the amount.
Grooveshark lets users upload songs on to its servers and other users could stream songs from there for free, and has signed up 25m users since 2006.
According to an email by Grooveshark spokeswoman Kristin Harris, it was a contract dispute with EMI that they expected to resolve.
Grooveshark claims to be the world’s largest music service with 30m users and 14bn streams a year, and the company honours copyright holders’ requests which comply with Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable laws.
